


The Darkness in Me

by regenorakel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Demonic Possession, Exorcisms, Gore, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 02:25:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1452064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regenorakel/pseuds/regenorakel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pack exorcizes a demon. After that, strange things start happening to Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkness in Me

**Author's Note:**

> More or less loosely based on [this gifset and the tags under it](http://clarkoholic.tumblr.com/post/29869371729/i-should-be-happy-but-what-i-feel-is-corrupted).
> 
> My lovely friend [Jojo](http://fonulyn.tumblr.com) helped me with details on demons and exorcisms, which I knew next to nothing about. Maybe I should watch Supernatural some time.

Stiles watches with morbid fascination as the black swirls of smoke vanish in the crisp night air and the formerly possessed guy Lydia just exorcized slumps to the ground, unconscious. Isaac, Scott, Boyd and Derek are lingering behind Lydia, waiting for something to happen still. When nothing does happen, all of them visibly relax. Lydia falls to her knees and Stiles releases a shuddering breath. Peter is standing beside him, completely unaffected. Stiles really doesn’t like that guy at all.  
  
Suddenly, both relief and exhaustion hit him so hard he almost goes kneeling, too. He sees Scott help Lydia back up and they start walking back to the cars they left at the edge of the forest, with Derek and Boyd carrying the unconscious guy they exorcized, but their actions sound muffled to his ears and he hears a faint hysteric laughing sound.  
  
He looks at everyone around, confused, but none of them are laughing. Maybe it’s just the reality of the situation finally kicking in now that everything is over and his mind is laughing manically at having survived yet another supernatural catastrophe. He draws a few more unsteady breaths and follows the others.  
  
That night, Stiles dreams about Derek tearing the flesh from his bones with his teeth and Lydia burning the pieces in a huge bonfire.  
  
  
It’s been a while since Stiles woke up screaming. His throat feels raw and he rubs at it, uselessly of course, swallows to see just how bad it is. It’s bad.  
  
Stiles gets the milk from the fridge, gulps down what he can without upsetting his stomach. It helps ease the ache in his throat. He notes that his dad is already out of the house. Then again, ‘already’ is maybe a little bit of an euphemism since it’s eleven in the morning. Stiles briefly wonders why his dad let him sleep in so long, but decides he’s not going to argue with a good thing, and it is a Saturday, after all.  
  
He still feels exhausted from last night’s events, though he’s not sure why. He came out of it fine, just a few scratches and probably bruises - he hasn’t looked in the mirror yet - from when he was sent sprawling across the cold forest ground; nothing that would leave him this tired. That demon really had been a bitch to get to hold still long enough for Lydia to perform the spell that would send it back into the fiery pits of hell.  
  
Stiles almost drops the milk he’s still holding in his right hand when he hears that faint hysterical laughter again. He lets his eyes dart around, strains his ears. There’s no one in the house except for him. On high alert now, he puts the milk back in the fridge and heads back to his room.  
  
“This had better not be some kind of weird werewolf shit,” he mumbles to himself as he throws the door to his room open, only to find it empty. Stiles’ heart starts hammering now - he doesn’t know what to make of that weird sound he just heard, the one that apparently exists only in his head. Not that he’s not used to his head never quite being silent; he thinks a lot and occasionally his mind will go running, but manic laughter is something new.  
  
That night, Stiles dreams about being an alpha werewolf who roams the woods and one night, he bites Scott, whose screams haunt him until dawn.  
  
  
The nightmares stop after those first two days; Stiles mostly doesn’t dream at all anymore or maybe he just doesn’t remember it. He did learn that everyone dreams every night, even if they can’t recall the dreams in the morning, after all. Still, he has a weird feeling nagging at him that he can’t quite put a finger on and it’s slowly driving him mad.  
  
  
“This is my stash of supernatural weapons, if you will,” Deaton explains as he leads Stiles and Derek into a room behind a heavy steel door that’s stacked up to the impressively high ceiling with all kinds of dried plants, liquids, granulates, powders and other things that aren’t immediately identifiable.  
  
Stiles looks around as Deaton asks Derek about the witch they are dealing with right now and he spots a rack of small vials, a dozen in total, on one of the shelves to his right. He feels his vision zero in on the liquid in the vials; it almost seems to glow. His palms get sweaty and he feels his heart rate go through the roof. A memory that doesn’t seem familiar floods his mind, the sensation of being burned. It makes his skin crawl. He feels someone grip his shoulder and the sensation is gone. Derek looks at him with his eyebrows drawn together. He seems concerned and determined. Stiles stares him in the eyes, rooted to the spot, feeling overwhelmed.  
  
“We will make it work,” Derek says and Stiles realizes he must think Stiles was reacting to whatever he was discussing with Deaton about the witch. He hears the quiet, hysteric laughter again.  
“Sure we will,” Stiles replies, voice as unsteady as he has ever heard it, and flees the room.  
  
Later that night, they sit around Derek’s newly bought dining table discussing their strategy for taking down the witch. Deaton supplied them with a few herbs and liquids Stiles didn’t yet bother to learn the use of; they will go over all of them in a bit after discussing the general plan. Stiles tries to avoid thinking about what happened in the room in Deaton’s basement, tries not to think about how for a brief moment it felt like his flesh was being burned. He tries not to remember the dream he had that night after they exorcized the demon.  
“Stiles?”  
Scott’s voice draws him out of his thoughts and he realizes his heart is beating fast again, which of course all his werewolf friends picked up on. “Sorry, you were saying?” Stiles asks and leaves it at that. He doesn’t want to explain and anyway, he doesn’t really have an explanation.  
  
When Stiles gets home at 10:47, he finds his dad asleep on the couch, TV running, pizza box open on the coffee table. He sighs and turns the TV off, throws the box in the trash. He gently shakes his dad awake and silently worries about his health, like so many other times before.  
  
_He will die soon anyway._  
  
That night, Stiles has a panic attack.  
  
  
They take the witch down four days later. It’s made easier by how she keeps pointing accusingly at Stiles and screeching in a foreign language that doesn’t make sense to any of them.  
  
  
Scott comes over on the weekend to hang out and play video games. Stiles is a little surprised by just how much he looks forward to it. Interacting with Scott is easy, the familiarity of it is easy. They are in the middle of a boss fight when Scott clears his throat and decides to speak.  
“It’s good to have you back to normal,” he comments and Stiles has to pause the game.  
“What do you mean?” he asks and Scott frowns at his controller.  
“No offense dude, but you were acting weird these past weeks. Not much like yourself, you know?” Scott looks Stiles in the eyes. Stiles swallows, flicks his gaze around nervously.  
“How so? I thought you were used to me being weird,” he attempts to joke but neither of them laughs.  
“Seriously, dude. You were… quiet. Like, almost all the time. When we were discussing stuff, you hardly spoke to us. We were worried. Even Derek,” Scott explains and Stiles is looking him in the eyes now. Scott looks worried. And it’s Stiles’ fault.  
  
_All of this is your fault._  
  
Stiles can feel his chest constricting, the air being wrenched out of his lungs. He tries to breathe, tries to focus on something else. It doesn’t work.  
  
That night, Stiles dreams about sinking his elongated teeth, fangs, into Lydia’s skin.  
  
  
Stiles flinches when Peter passes him as they go over the latest incident they barely got through alive. The memory of the dream is still all too vivid, all too new. No one seems to notice though; after all, everyone in the room is spooked by Peter - except for Peter himself, of course. Lydia straight out refuses to speak to him, refuses to come to the meetings. Stiles is fine with that, he understands. Saying he’s comfortable around Peter would be the lie of the century. Stiles catches Derek looking at him with his default expression, that mix of anger and a hint of worry. His heartbeat must have given him away again. As usual. They stare at each other for a long moment until Stiles manages to tear his eyes away.  
  
Stiles has had his fair share of almost-heart attacks already, but apparently that doesn’t keep someone from showing up unexpectedly in other peoples’ houses.  
“What do you want, Derek?” Stiles manages to say after that initial moment of shock at seeing Derek sitting in his desk chair in the middle of the night.  
“Something is wrong,” Derek answers and Stiles flops down on his bed with a groan, rolling his eyes.  
“When has there ever been a time when nothing was wrong since we got to know each other?” he snaps back and takes off his socks. He’s tired, he needs to sleep. Derek doesn’t make any sound or move, just keeps staring at Stiles with his eyebrows drawn together. Stiles waits. Derek stands, walks over to where Stiles is sitting at the edge of the bed. “Again with the looming over people? Seriously? I thought you got rid of that bad habit.” Derek’s eyebrows impossibly draw even closer together. It would be fascinating if only Stiles could calm his heart.  
“What?” he asks to dispel the tension. Without another word, Derek is out the window.  
  
That night, Stiles dreams about Derek touching him while the word ‘monster’ continuously resounds in his mind like a broken record.  
  
  
Stiles is a little surprised by the force with which Scott shoves him through the front door of the loft, but the second he steps into the circle, he understands. And he knows something horrible is about to happen.  
  
Lydia and Allison come into view, with Isaac and Boyd hot at their heels, Peter training a little distance behind. They must have been waiting in the living room area. The cautious, haunted look in their eyes - except for Peter’s, he looks amused - makes Stiles’ skin break out in goosebumps. The two girls are carrying little vials that look awfully familiar. He looks down at the circle he’s standing in, the symbols he knows all too well, and cold panic rises in him, though just like the time he felt like his flesh was burning, back in Deaton’s basement, he knows the sensation isn’t really his own.  
  
The group keeps advancing on him, he can see it out of the corner of his eye. They stop at about two feet from where he is trapped in the circle they drew on the floor in white chalk. He hears the manic, hysterical laughter again, but this time it’s not only in his mind, it’s coming out of his own mouth. He feels a tug at his consciousness, like he’s being pulled away from what’s happening; he struggles to keep in control, but to no avail.  
  
“Stiles?” Allison asks, but he just keeps laughing in that weird voice that is neither his, nor is it even human. He notices she’s clutching something to her chest. He stops laughing, spots the charms on all the others as well.  
“So you really figured it out. Smart puppies,” Stiles hears himself say and it sounds distorted, wrong, awful. His vision is hazy, swimming with a black film that drowns out the colors of his surroundings. “Trapped me, too. Your strategy is better this time.”  
Scott steps forward now, too, all determined expression and hard eyes. “Let go of him,” he says and Stiles hears the laugh again, brief this time but equally as terrifying as before.  
  
“Stop playing around.” And that, that is Derek’s voice coming from right behind Stiles. He turns around, feels his mouth turn into a manic smile, a smile that’s too wide and too disturbing.  
“Oh, look who’s giving us the honor, the great alpha. He dreams about you touching him, you know? The stupid little boy.” Stiles flinches inwardly, what with the control over his body taken away from him. Derek’s face speaks of murderous intent.  
“Lydia, Allison,” he says and at that, the girls open the vials. Stiles feels his body turn back to face them just in time for it to be hit by the holy water.  
  
It’s the sensation of being burned alive all over again, only this time it isn’t a memory. A piercing scream tears itself from his chest, a mixture of his own voice and the distorted one of the demon that’s controlling him. Stiles briefly wonders if that’s how Peter felt when they burned him, but the searing pain quickly distracts him from that thought. Through his ongoing screaming, he can faintly hear Lydia recite the exorcism spell. “He hates himself for what happened to Scott,” he hears the demon yell now and flinches again. “He feels he is responsible! He hates himself for not being able to protect Lydia from Peter! He thinks he is weak and useless as a human! He thinks he is responsible for his mother’s death!”  
  
Just then, Lydia finally finishes the spell and Stiles feels the demon’s presence fade; he chokes on black, swirling smoke as all air leaves his lungs and one last scream comes out of his raw throat before he collapses to the ground, fainting in the process.  
  
  
When Stiles wakes up, everything hurts. He opens his eyes slowly, blinks hard against the bright light; he flexes his fingers, carefully pushes himself up into a sitting position.  
“You should sleep some more.”  
Stiles’ head whips around to his right where Derek is sitting in a chair. Stiles immediately regrets moving so fast and falls back onto the pillow with a groan, pinching his eyes shut to stop the spinning.  
  
“Was it the truth?” Derek asks and Stiles doesn’t have to ask what he means. Stiles briefly considers not answering, pretending to have fallen asleep again.  
“Yes,” he replies simply instead and opens his eyes after a moment. Derek is looking at him intently, surprisingly without the usual frown. Stiles swallows and his throat burns. “Could I get some water?” he croaks and Derek inclines his head to the left where Stiles sees a glass with what is presumably the desired water standing on a little bedside table. He sits up again, very slowly, and takes the glass; he empties it in five long gulps, sets it back onto the table. The following silence makes Stiles a bit nervous, but he’s too exhausted to fidget, so he looks at Derek again and asks a question of his own.  
“How did you know?”  
  
Derek snorts, rolls his eyes.  
“You were hardly yourself, Stiles. A few times I thought you were shaken by the things we went through, but then… there were situations when it just seemed odd, the way you behaved,” he explains. Stiles opens and closes his mouth, nods once.  
  
“Could I get some more water?” he asks as the silence stretches on and his throat starts feeling too dry again. Derek actually smiles - it’s small, but it’s there - and stands.  
“Of course.” He picks up the glass and walks to the door that separates the bedroom from the rest of the loft, stops there, turns back to Stiles. “It’s not your fault, none of it,” Derek says seriously and Stiles feels his heart ache so much he wants to cry.  
  
“It’s a little ironic that you of all people should say that,” he comments and looks at Derek as he comes back into the room. He sets the water on the bedside table and sits down next to Stiles; he seems a little lost now.  
“I know,” he admits, “but someone needed to tell you. I’m sick of you saying you’re okay when you’re not.”  
  
Stiles once again feels overwhelmed. It’s all too much. He flings his arms around Derek’s chest and buries his face in Derek’s shoulder, holds on tight as new tears prick at his eyes. Derek carefully brings his own arms around Stiles’ upper body, presses them close together.  
“Thank you,” Stiles murmurs into the now slightly wet fabric of Derek’s shirt.


End file.
